Didcot–Meylan Twinning Association

Visit to Meylan- 5^th and 6^th November 2005

To celebrate 20 years of Twinning activities in Meylan

The purpose of this visit was to join with our French friends in a celebration of their first twenty years of twinning activities in the town of Meylan. The ceremony was small but meaningful and packed with good omens for the future.

From Didcot, Nick and Eleanor Hards represented the town council and Terry Joslin attended as Chair of the Twinning Committee.It was quite an emotive occasion, seeing on display documents and photographs from years gone by and of course, meeting again some of the people involved in setting it up in the first place. All the hard work involved in maintaining a twinning suddenly proved worthwhile.

It was also pleasing to meet up with representatives from Meylan’s other European ‘twin’ - a small town called Planegg, situated near Munich in Germany. Five years ago, Planegg sought to twin with Didcot, not only to make a neat threesome, but with the serious purpose of exchanging in language, education and culture. Apparently, there is a huge demand in Planegg to undertake another twinning with somewhere in England and the German representatives we met stated that they would just love it to be Didcot.

Apparently, Planegg has much in common with Didcot in that it is a strong bio-science centre and is also a centre for technology and research. Sound familiar ?

We undertook to investigate whether or not a second twinning partner for Didcot would be a viable proposal and we will be talking to schools, councillors, businesses , sports and arts groups, etc. If anyone is interested in this tentative idea, would they care to make contact with any of the members of the Didcot Twinning Association and make their interest known ?

Finally, we send a vote of thanks to our hosts Mme. Christine Tardy (Mayor) and Mme. Mireille Adji- Anastasiou ( Chair of Twinning) along with many, many others who made our stay so warm and inviting. We look forward to meeting our French friends again in September when they will visit Didcot.